TV, Films, Games and Comics is what I do

Main menu

Tag Archives: Lists

Where there is good there is also evil. To the Autobots that evil comes in the form of the Decepticons.

5: Devastator/ Menasor/ Bruticus (G1): One of the things that I really loved about watching through the first two series of G1 Transformers was seeing the formations of the combiners since they all looked awesome and before I watched this I was a huge Power Rangers fan, so it was basically seeing evil versions of the Megazords. The first combiner that we see in the series is Devastator, and he gets the upper hand for the Decepticons, but we then see them start to be defeated by the Autobot more and more frequently. However, Devastator is also good as separate vehicles since that they are based off construction vehicles so they have been useful in building structures for the Decepticons. Menasor on the other hand was designed on more of a different matter and that being to match the Autobots on the ground since that the main design motif for the Decepticons was more militarized, these seemed to be more blended in for disguise, but when they were put into battle with the Autobots they had the upper hand, until the Autobots created their counterpart and they could beat Menasor. But the most intriguing of the combiners is Bruticus for the fact the robots created for him were built from Starscream after he was kicked out of the Decepticons and was going to use them to show Megatron how resourceful he is. But the interesting thing about this was that Megatron praised Starscream for what he had done, and then he wiped the memory of the Cons used for Bruticus and used it for himself.

4: Steeljaw (Robots in Disguise): For a series that I have just gotten into I found that Steeljaw is a rather interesting Decepticon. In the show, Steeljaw is shown as a Con that only wants one thing in life and that is being ruling over a planet full of Decepticons and he would do anything and use anyone to get what he wants. In the first series of the show, he starts getting his army ready, which is made up of the typical villain of the week and uses their abilities and sometimes sacrificing them to get captured to get the job done. I think another reason why I like this character is also because of his voice actor, that being Troy Baker, who makes this role his own and gives a menacing and devious character.

3: Starscream (Various): What can I say about Starscream that people already haven’t said before. He has delusions of grandeur wanting to become the leader of the Decepticons and become respected. But on the other hand, he is also a bit of a coward. He has also had a lot of good moments to throughout the various series and incarnations of the show with some of the best coming from G1 and Cybertron. One of my favorite moments from G1 was during the Transformers Movie when Starscream decides to take advantage of an injured Megatron by casting him and some of the other Decepticons out of Astrotrain since that Astrotrain was being weighed down. With this Starscream then became the leader of the Decepticons for a hot minute before he got killed by Galvatron. Another of my favorite moments is during Cybertron when Starscream uses the Earth Cyber Key and makes himself to be a rather strong opponent to the Autobots.

2: Megatron (Various): Megatron has been the leader for the Decepticons for a long time and he has had a lot of cool transformations from a gun, to a tank, to something that resembles the Batmobile. He is a no nonsense leader and can be rather ruthless at times, but he does see the good in the ideas, sometimes, that his team has. The one that I mentioned already was seeing the brilliant idea that Starscream had when he built his own combiner and then wiping the memory of said combiner to forget that he was created by Starscream. He also has had a lot of rather good and smart ideas compared to what the Autobots have done since that during the first few episodes of G1 when they attacked places to go and gather Energon to get on their way back home to Cybertron, they use green energy sources to generate Energon and that they were successful in getting Energon out of it. But with the good there are also a lot of problems that Megatron has and he does seem that he can be rather self-destructive, blaming his team for the failures that have happened over the many years and battles with the Autobots.

1: Soundwave (G1/Prime/Robots in Disguise): I love Soundwave for so many different reasons. The first is that his transformation is useful for a lot of the plots, since that in G1 the transform modes could change their size, and a lot of the times it featured Soundwave being the size of an 80’s radio being picked up by a dumb human. The second thing that I like about him is that he has Cassette-Bots that have proved to be rather useful for the Decepticons with Laserbeak being used for surveillance and Prowl used to hunt down any humans that can get away from them. Another reason why I like Soundwave is that in later incarnations he is a powerful fighter and is also cunning. During an episode of Robots in Disguise he was able to manipulate the ground-bridge in the Autobot base to escape a pocket dimension that he was in and managed to get Bumblebee into it. He also managed to beat Strongarm and Grimlock and he was also nearly able to set his plan in motion to signal other Decepticons back to Earth but he was stopped by Bumblebee who used his own tricks against him to put him back in the pocket dimension.

As a child growing up I loved watching Transformers Armada and its sequel shows, then I got into watching G1 Transformers and enjoyed that even more so I decided to make a top five lists of my favourite robots starting from the side of the Autobots first.

5: Rodimus Prime (G1): During the events of the Transformers movie, Optimus dies and the Matrix of Leadership then gets handed over to a few other Autobots, but at the end of the film then Hot Rod heeds the call of the Matrix and manages to defeat Unicron taking on the new mantle of Rodimus Prime. One of my favourite things that I like about this is that we get a new leader for the Autobots who doesn’t have that much knowledge on leadership, which does seem rather off putting but he was rather likable as a character.

4: Arielbots (G1): During the events throughout G1, the Autobots needed a way to defeat Menasor who had just been created by the Decepticons to up their forces and they were overpowering them. So, it was their decision to build their own combiner, this in the design of five Arielbots that were based on Cybertronian planes. Combining they form Superion and they manage to defeat the Decepticons Menasor. But there is something that I like rather more about them than the other combiners that are in the show, that I remember and that was that they ended up having some character development. In one or two episodes after they are built they are in a story where a few of them think that the Decepticons are alright and they accidentally get transported back through time where they end up meeting Megatron and Orion Pax. The Arielbots then discover how bad that the Decepticons were and they help Orion Pax beat Megatron and his Decepticons and they show their loyalty more when they realise that Orion is now Optimus Prime which is when they get back to the present, Optimus then realises them creating a possible change in the timeline or that the Arielbots were meant to go through time.

3: Optimus Prime (All): Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots and the usual main character in many of the Transformers media series and is the staple of the Transformers universe. The reason being, he is a great leader and a powerful fighter. Originally starting life as Orion Pax on Cybertron he adored Megatron but when he realised how evil he was he decided that he would stop Megatron as all cost. Another thing that I really like about Optimus through the Unicron Trilogy where we got to see him combine with characters like Jetfire, Omega Supreme and Leobreaker as usual finishing moves.

2: Grimlock (G1 & Robots in Disguise): The Dinobots are one of my favourite things about the Transformers series and I like them both in G1 and in Robots in Disguise. I like Grimlock in G1 since that he was pretty much a powerhouse and has a lot of good and funny lines through the series, but one of my favourite moments is in series 3. This is when Grimlock becomes super smart when helping the Autobots deal with anti-electrons and with this he then can create a new group of Transformers called the Technobots. For the Robots of Disguise series, I did start of being rather curious on why Grimlock was a Decepticon where they explain it rather well. But then he was then given the change of signa to the Autobots as Bumblebee entrusted him that much and since then he has been a good powerhouse for the Autobots but there is one episode that I have seen that does make him stand out. In the episode Deep Trouble, Grimlock gets hurt during a training exercise but he just passes it off as nothing to the team, but as the episode progresses it starts to hurt him more and more. He confesses it to the Bumblebee and apologises to him for hiding the injury since that it could have cost them the mission.

1: Bumblebee (Robots in Disguise): I am rather surprised that I didn’t put Optimus as the first on the list and there is a reason why, Bumblebee has more depth of a character for this than what Optimus has had in the past few series. Set after the events of Transformers Prime, Bumblebee is sent on a secret mission to Earth sent by Optimus Prime in a weird vision with him saying that a something bad is going to happen there. From there Bee is then joined by Strongarm and Sideswipe who accidently join him on Earth since that Strongarm is a cadet under Bee’s supervision and Sideswipe was under arrest at the time. Since then Bee’s team has grown a bit bigger when he enlisted the help of Grimlock, who was a prisoner on a transport ship and he then proved his worth to have Bee make him a Autobot. But something that did make him a good leader was in an episode where the team had to deal with prisoners that resemble skunks, and they could also spray to blind them. Near the end of the episode Bee concentrated hard on what he needed to do and in a bit of a Sherlockian way as well focusing on what he was going to do and It was successful managing to save his team, a city from being flooded and was able to capture the Decepticons.

One day when I was playing Dungeons and Dragons at a friend’s house we took a small break and we watched some of Community since that everyone there had already watched most of the show but I had not yet. I watched an episode and I freaking loved it. So then I bought all five seasons (at the time since then the sixth season is out) and watched them all in the span of a week. One year later I have decided to make a top ten list of my favourite episodes. However, this isn’t an actual top whatever list but just a list of ten episodes that I like and going from series to series mainly since I think it would be hard to make a list of ten and then reordering them.(This was meant to be a top ten list but I got really tired and lazy trying to get this out.)

Spanish 101: One of the first episodes that I do like from Community is Spanish 101 for two things, the story with Jeff and Peirce and ending with Troy and Abed. The episode revolves around Jeff trying to spend time with Britta and plans on doing it by trying to work with her on an assignment but Pierce swaps with Britta causing Jeff to be rather annoyed. In the study room Jeff waits for Peirce who arrives late and Jeff just wants to get the assignment over and done with quickly, however Peirce has other ideas. He decides that they need put on a whole show that barely has anything to do with the assignment. Troy and Abed then come along and show off what they are doing for the assignment and Jeff then snaps at Peirce who then leaves to try and hit on Britta at the silent protest that is happening outside. The next day after Peirce’s drunken ramblings their teacher, Chang, gives Jeff a passing grade and Peirce to so the assignment by himself. But Jeff decides to stand up with Peirce and does the whole show with him and we get a montage of the different scenes they had cutting along with the images of the rest of the gang seeing the craziness that happens. They both get low grades and they start to have more of a friendly bond between each other. Now to the second part of why I like this episode is the rap at the very end where Troy and Abed converse in Spanish what they were saying and just start putting nonsense together since that’s what the subtitles translated.

Modern Warfare: For the first season I think that this is one of my favourite episodes. The episode starts off as any usual episode of Community but then things change quickly as Jeff takes a nap in his car to find that the whole campus is deserted and covered with paintballs. Jeff finds out that The Dean Pelton announced that the prize has students hunting each other down. Jeff nearly gets attacked by Leonard but Abed saves him and delivers an adlibbed Terminator 2 line. They arrive back with Troy and Jeff discovers what the prize is priority registration for next semester. The chess club then tries to attack them but the gang uses a trap to shoot them in the back, also Jeff takes off his sweater to have a Bruce Willis from Die Hard image. They head out of their safe room and find Peirce with Starburns who gets shot by him. They head into the toilets to have a pee break where they get ambushed by Britta, Annie and Shirley. They join forces and they head across campus where Troy and Annie get hit by the Glee Club, Jeff uses Peirce as bait and he finds out where the Glee club are and they take them out. Later that night in the cafeteria the remaining members go over what they are going to do with their priority registration and Shirley says that she is going to book morning classes so that she can spend more time with her boys and then the roller-skater troop attacks them and Shirley and Abed are taken out of the game. Dean Pelton talks with Chang in his office where Chang asks for him to be put in the game so that he can take them out and gets enrolled in a class. In the study room, Britta patches up Jeff and they end up banging. Britta tries to get the jump on Jeff but he was one step ahead but Chang comes in wielding an advanced paintball gun and then gets into a slow-motion shoot off with Britta who gets hit but Chang also gets hit who starts to detonate a paint bomb that engulfs the entire room with green paint. Jeff goes to Dean Pelton’s office and blasts around the office with Chang’s paintball gun and Dean Pelton tries to give Jeff the blu-ray player but he shoots him in the head and asks that he wants the priority registration which the next day he gives to Shirley. I love this episode since that it pretty much is homage to 80’s action movies but most notably Die Hard and since they swapped from guns to paintball it was a really good touch.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: I love playing Dungeons and Dragons and this is something that I really do like. The episode starts off with a voice over introducing a character called Neil who transferred there after being bullied but the same starts to happen at Greendale. Jeff observes him and tries to cheer him up with bringing up his interest in D&D. Neil gives Jeff all of his manuals that he has which has Jeff worried about him so he gets the group together play a game with Neil to cheer up his spirit and they didn’t invite Pierce since he is rather a bit of a dick. Abed acts as the dungeon master for the group and Chang start playing with characters whilst Neil plays as his own character and he manages to impress them by killing the first wave of enemies with one swing. Pierce arrives in the study hall and is rather pissed that he wasn’t invited to play and Abed plays him into the game where he plays himself. Neil gives his character his cloak and Peirce uses his turn to steal Neil’s sword and flees from the group. Jeff and the group now decide that the group would hunt down Peirce and recover Neil’s weapon and Peirce goes off and gets some help from another student getting ahead of the group’s advancements. The group advance their story by heading to a town to acquire a Pegasus to pursuit Peirce and Annie seduces an elf to get the Pegasus. Peirce returns to the group and he uses his newly acquired amulet that controls Draconis to freeze time and transforms Neil’s character to be overweight. Peirce also uses his turn to tell Neil that it was Jeff who coined the term Fat Neil but Neil doesn’t seem to care and uses his turn to show pity on Peirce and the rest of the group does the same. Peirce gets frustrated with inactivity of the group and unfreezes time and he tries to go for another move but that uses up his turn and Neil attacks Peirce with the sword by throwing it at the amulet around his neck and Draconis eats Peirce and the dragon gives them some of the treasure that he has been hoarding ending the campaign. I mainly like this episode since that it does show up on how much of a dick that Peirce even for a fictional world. Also I like the opening credits for the show since that they have a more unique look since that all the actors had a more fantasy based images used for their pictures.

Critical Film Studies: This is a pretty interesting episode of Community since that it parodies two films, Pulp Fiction and My Dinner with Andre. This I did rather like since that looking at the promos for it showed that it was going to be a Pulp Fiction parody and this twist is rather good. The episode has Jeff and Abed having dinner at a fancy restaurant and Jeff notices something different about Abed and that he is acting social and normal. Jeff also wants to get through this dinner so that he can then take Abed to his surprise party that is, of-course, Pulp Fiction themed, where Britta was able to get the diner that she worked at booked for the party. In the restaurant Abed tells Jeff about his trip to the Cougar Town set where he played an extra in the show (which he actually did). Abed also manages to get Jeff to open up and have a real conversation where Jeff lets out his insecurities and recalls an incident where he had to dress up as an Indian girl. Meanwhile at the Diner Troy seems to be jealous about the gift that Jeff had got Abed since it was a briefcase (copying from Pulp Fiction) and Chang tries to get Troy to open up the briefcase, which he does and discovers there is a lightbulb and a certificate of authenticity claiming that the briefcase is the one that was used in Pulp Fiction. The bulb ends up overheating and then causes the certificate to burn. Troy blames Chang for what happened and starts breaking things in the diner. Jeff gets annoyed with Abed when he finds out that what he was doing was all an act and the rest of the gang comes in revealing that they had a surprise party planned and Britta even got fired from the job because of the damages. Later Abed meets with Jeff at the diner and brings up the reason of the ploy and that is he feels that him and Jeff had feel like they were drifting apart and it was his idea to get them back together. I like this episode for the homages to Pulp Fiction and it works really good way and the plan that Abed came up was rather unique.

A Fistful of Paintballs: This and the sequel episodes are my favourite episodes of all time. The episode starts off with Annie saving Neil from a group of bullies but when he wants a gun he gets shot. Dean Pelton had come up with a new paintball concept since that last year’s contest was a failure. This time around he partnered up with Pistol Patty’s Cowboy Creamery, an ice cream company who ponied up $100,000 for the winner and that’s how the pandemonium starts. Annie finds Abed back at her camp and he asks for her to join him, Jeff and Chang. But back with them they have been trapped by the math club and Chang betrays Jeff but Abed makes the save but Chang gets away. Jeff informs Annie that he is low on ammo and they discuss whether or not to align themselves with Peirce who is held in the cafeteria or steal it, but they are interrupted by the Black Rider but they manage to evade him noting that he doesn’t look like a student that goes there. Heading to the cafeteria they run into Britta, Shirley and Troy who are working for Peirce who has set up safe zone named after himself Fort Hawthorn. Peirce says that they should team up and split the cash between themselves and tells them where the ammo stash is at. Whilst looking for the stash Annie rescues Chang from a group of cheerleaders, Chang gets away from her and Annie peruses him to find The Black Rider. Abed and Jeff arrive to save Annie and she discovers that Peirce had loaded Jeff’s gun with blanks and they head off the Dean’s office where he is hiding in the supply closet with the paintball stash where they stock up and Annie takes Chang’s paintball gun from last year and they head back to Peirce. They find the room trashed and they find Peirce and confront him, he says that he filled the gun with blanks because he was pissed that he didn’t get invited to a card game the group had but it turns out they weren’t playing, but in fact voting to see if Peirce would be allowed in the study group for next year. But it turns out that he is still in since that it had to be a unanimous decision and that Annie voted to keep him in but nobody else knows. The Black Rider emerges and gets into a stand-off with Jeff as Annie gets in a stand-off with Peirce. Pierce feigns a heart attack but when the Black Rider goes to help him he gets shot by Pierce, the Black Rider then reveals that he was only there since he worked for Pistol Patty so that they can keep the money, Peirce runs off vowing revenge. But here we come to the best part of the episode. Chang is seen looking for a new alliance when he is shot by a paintball machine gun from the back of Pistol Patty’s van where a group of people dressed up as a commando team disembark where Pistol Patty announces that it’s time for Plan B Operation Total Invasion. The good thing about this episode is that it starts out as a western film, parodying spaghetti westerns most notably the Dollars Trilogy but then at the end it completely changes leading into the second part.

A Few Paintballs More: This is a pretty good follow up to from the first part and then it turns into a Star Wars parody, but the first thing that I want to talk about is this, I am sure that this episode I’m sure inspired the Death Troopers in The Purge: Anarchy since there are a group that goes around with a machine gun in the back of a truck and this episode aired in 2011 which aired two years before the first film, but that could just be a coincidence. The episode begins with a text crawl going over what had happened before. Pistol Patty and a squadron of Troopers march through the halls of Greendale and arrive at the Dean Pelton’s office to then reveal that Patty is in face Dean Spreck, of rivals City College, and he tells Pelton of his plan which Abed and Troy overhear. Troy and Abed return to the surviving students and form a rebel alliance to defeat the Troopers and win the cash to repair the campus, but this also causes a problem between Jeff and Troy to see who would be the leader. During the bickering Spreck sends in a robot armed with a paint bomb to get everyone in the room but Magnitude sacrifices himself for the rest of the rebels. Peirce gets captured by the Troopers but convinces them to take him as prisoner offering to give them information on Jeff. Abed flirts with Annie going through a Han Solo impersonation and she is attracted to this personality. Troy and Jeff come up with two different plans to take on the Troopers with Jeff wanting to do an all-out attack to get the gun in the Ice Cream van whilst Troy says that they should lure them into the Library setting up the sprinkler system to cover them in paint. But Annie being the voice of reason suggests they do both by using Troy’s plan as a distraction to take the gun. Troy, Abed, Annie and Shirley draw some Troopers in the Library whilst Jeff’s group goes after the gun. Troy’s team manages to fortify themselves in the study room but when they try to escape through the vent but they can’t escape due to one of them getting stuck in the vent. So they decide to shoot their way out of the building and Troy is shot during the escape but Abed and Annie manage to barricade themselves in a room and Shirley is able to set off the alarm and they are able to take out the Troopers as well as Abed and Annie, who share a kiss in the raining paint and Abed snaps out of his Han Solo persona. Meanwhile with Jeff’s team the gun overpowers their team with Britta being the sole survivor from their team, but Shirley rescues her in a golf buggy and they shoot the remaining Troopers but Britta gets hit during their run. As Shirley celebrates she gets shot by two troopers but Pierce manages to feign a heart attack again and shoots the two remaining enemies and wins the fight for Greendale. He then announces that he is going to give the money to the school and the people rejoice. The next day the study group meets in the library minus Peirce (who arrives later) talking about what classes they are going to take next semester. Peirce arrives and starts telling them their story that he has been at Greendale for 12 years and that this is the only group that he has been a part of and is the only group that has ever wanted him. In the end he decides that he no longer is going to be part of the study group and the group just thinks that he is acting out but he doesn’t return ending the series. It is a really good ending for the series and the parodies for Star Wars are really good. Also from what I found (from Wikipedia) that after Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige gave the direction to Joe and Anthony Russo for Captain America: The Winter Soldier after watching the finale in which Joe directed.

Digital Estate Planning: One of the things that I do like about this show is that a couple of times they will do an episode that is rather unique and I think this is one of my favourite one. The episode consists of Peirce and the group being invited to a warehouse where they are met by Gilbert Lawson who is Pierces father’s assistant. He informs him and the group that in his father’s last will and testament it was is dying wish for Pierce and seven friends to play a game that he had in development for thirty years. The game is pretty cool since that they decided to go with the more retro designing of 8-bit gaming to modern day graphics. In the game they are greeted by Cornelius, Pierces’ father, who tells them that this is actually a punishment for him since that Pierce questioned the moist toweletees industry and that the first player that reaches the end of the game wins Pierce’s inheritance and Gilbert will take the position of the eight player. Plus, for a twist Gilbert knows a lot about the game and easily kills the group to progress further in the game. After restarting from the game the group come across the first village where Abed falls for a NPC called Hilda. But whilst going through the town looking for a clue for the game, Britta creates a strength potion that Jeff believes is actually poison and during that time Annie and Shirley manage to kill the towns blacksmith and his wife (Hilda’s parents) and decide to burn down the entire town down to erase their traces there. Gilbert then arrives, levelled up and kills the group but when he kills Britta he drinks the ‘Potion of Strength’ and dies since Jeff was right and it was actually poisonous and Gilbert is sent back to the start of the game. Gilbert becomes frustrated and he decides to use cheat codes and turns his character invincible. Abed decides to stay with Hilda and rebuild her life and after beating most of the team they find the item they need to get to the last level, the white crystal. Gilbert confronts the group and when they try to attack they just reflect off him. Jeff and Peirce realise that he is cheating and confronts Gilbert out of the game where he goes on to give them his backstory where it turns out that he in fact Peirce half-brother since his father had an affair and says that he deserves Pierces inheritance and that he was more of a son than what Peirce was. They head back into the game and they find that Abed has built a large castle and an endless amount of resources to build up what they need. Gilbert arrives at the end where Cornelius congratulates him and says he worn stand for his lies and asks him to sign an agreement disavowing him from the Hawthorne bloodline, but he rejects it and Cornelius starts a war against him. The group arrives heavily armed at the castle and is able to defeat Cornelius but everyone has sacrificed themselves to defeat him and Gilbert is the only one left standing, who rejects it believing that he is not deserve it. Gilbert thanks the group and starts to bond with Peirce whilst offering drinks for the rest of the gang and Abed manages to get a copy of Hilda before leaving. I like this episode for quite a few reasons, I’m a big gamer and that something more different for a design it is well designed.

If there is one that I like watching around the Christmas season it is the usual specials that shows do that are based or set around Christmas. Now since that there have been shows like The Simpsons that have the usual specials throughout its near thirty year tenure, I will only be putting in one episode for each show.

4: Family Guy: Road to the North Pole: In 2010 Family Guy continued with their Road to series that has had quite a few popular moments and this is possibly my second favourite episode. In this episode Brian takes Stewie to see a Mall Santa that is rather disappointment so Stewie decides to go and kill Santa in the North Pole, bringing Brian along with him. After a few problems later Stewie and Brian find their way to Santa’s Workshop where they find it to only be a dark and gloomy factory that seems to be heavily polluted and a lifeless waste land where they then find that Santa is sick and depressed. Santa reveals to the two that over the many years that with the world’s population growing he had became overwhelmed with the demand for fancier presents for each and every year. Santa starts to get sicker and Stewie and Brian decide to take up the mantle of Santa and deliver the presents for him. This then leads to Brian and Stewie realising that Santa’s job is rather difficult since that in their first house they ended up being seen by the family and then realised that it was the wrong house and that took a whole hour. On Christmas morning the whole town finds that they don’t have any presents and Brian and Stewie appear on TV bringing out the dying Santa and informs the residents that humanity’s greed is killing Santa and that they should only get one present a year so that Santa can start to regain his health. One year later everything seems to be back together and Santa is a healthier thanks to the less of a demand for presents. I do like this episode since that it does have quite a nice message to it since that the world that we do live in seems to be more commercial and a proportion of people wanting more and more presents each year making the meaning of Christmas rather moot. The beginning of the episode is what rather seems to be more of the downside for the episode and I would just skip forward to when they get to Canada.

3: American Dad!: For Whom the Sleigh Bell Tolls: In 2010 American Dad too continued with their Christmas series with this episode and for me it is a rather good one to. As usual canon in the show Stan rather despises Jeff since that he hasn’t done anything good in his life but Francine wants Stan to have Jeff be joined in on the family traditions. Stan then decides that it time that Steve has a gun and against Francine’s wishes he still gives it to Steve and they use some snowmen in a parking lot. But it turns out that behind one of the snowmen was apparently a Mall Santa and with this Steve decides never to use a weapon again. Stan convinces Steve to hide the body from Francine to see if he was in the CIA database but it turns out that the DNA doesn’t match anybody at all. Francine and Hayley discover what they have done and that they all go into the woods and bury the Santa and make a pact to not share with anyone what they had done. The next day they then get messages all with Christmas based puns that somebody knows that Santa was killed. The Smiths return to the site when they find that the body was goneAn elf appears to them and says that Santa is rejuvenating and vows vengeance against the Smith family and they decide to hide out in the woods with Roger, who has his own side story looking for booze, with the help of Bob Todd. Jeff manages to find where the Smiths with Hayley telling him where they would be which also lead Santa finding them also to Jeff’s ignorance. It also is revealed that Bob Todd’s house is also an armoury where they all fend off the attack from Santa’s army that consist of Elves, reindeer and snow-trolls. In the end Stan gets injured and Santa gives a proposition for Jeff giving him the Relic from the Golden Compass. Jeff goes to Santa’s side but then heel turns stabbing Santa and dragging Stan away to safety. The two then start to see more eye-to-eye about things including their love for Hayley. The end of the war comes as Christmas Morning happens and Santa’s vengeance stops, at least until next year when Santa can get his revenge and now the Smiths now have a new tradition. I do like this episode since that it is written rather well with the continuity in hand, which I don’t think most shows usually have like this. Plus the lingering threat that Santa can strike again on Christmas Eve is something that does leave for a sequel which they do make.

2: Futurama: X-Mas Story: Futurama is one of my favourite animated series and this is a really good episode from the early days of the series. In this Fry celebrates his first X-Mas and the Planet Express staff decide to decorate the building to help him feel more nostalgic. Fry decides to go out and buy Leela a X-mas present since that she had a string of bad X-masses since that she grew up in an orphanage. The others inform Fry to be back before sun down since that Robot Santa Claus will come out and kill anyone who is outside then. They then give the back story of the Robot Santa that he was created to determine who was on the naughty and nice list but a programming error turned the robot into a killing machine when his standards set too high thus he would kill anyone that was on the naughty list which is everybody. Fry manages to find a present for Leela in the form of a parrot, but it flies away and Leela decides to go out and get Fry before Robot Santa arrives. Fry manages to find the parrot atop a large building and Leela manages to save Fry but it’s really too late, Robot Santa has arrived. He hunts down the two chasing them around the city. Fry and Leela managed to get into Planet Express but Robot Santa manages to break into Planet Express through the chimney and he tells them that they have all been naughty, except for Dr Zoidburg for some reason who manages to help the team force Robot Santa back into the chimney and blow him into the stratosphere with his reindeer as well. In the end everyone celebrates by singing a song to then see that Robot Santa promises that he will be back next X-Mas. I do love this episode since that the chase scene through New New York is rather cool and interesting and brings in, at least one of my most favourable quotes; your mistletoe is no match for my TOW missile. It is always a good episode that I do like to watch whenever it is on.

1: The Simpsons: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire: I had a pretty hard time deciding on which episode that I would have picked but the reason why I picked this was that it was the first actual episode of The Simpsons that was made for television that wasn’t a short. The episode begins at Springfield Elementary where the school is doing a pageant for Christmas where we see Lisa’s year covering the different ways countries celebrate Christmas. This then leads the family writing their letters to Santa yet when reading Bart’s letter to Santa, Homer and Marge become enraged to see that he wants to get a tattoo and they forbid him to get a tattoo. Whilst Christmas Shopping the next day Bart slips off to a Tattoo Parlour and attempts to get a tattoo done with the typical Mother design. Marge finds out that Bart is getting a tattoo and pulls him out and drags him down to a dermatologist to have it removed. This leads to using all the money that they were going to use on for spending money on getting the tattoo removed. Meanwhile when Homer is at work he finds out that Mr Burns isn’t going to be giving them their holiday bonus and then discovered that there is no money for presents he decides to become a Mall Santa as suggested by his friend Barney. On Christmas Eve Bart finds out that Homer is a Mall Santa but even worse is that Homer finds out that he has been paid less than expected. But Barney then comes up with the idea to take his pay and bet it on the greyhound races. Homer decides to bet all of his money on a dog called ‘Santa’s Little Helper’ as some sort of sign but looses it all as it comes in last place and he then see’s the dog’s owner disown him for losing the race. Bart pleads with Homer to keep the dog which he agrees to them. When they get home, Homer comes clean about not getting his bonus but the family considers Santa’s Little Helper to be their present which they all accept into the family. Even for the very first episode this episode does still hold up rather well and is a rather good story since that Homer goes out of his way to try and get money for presents since of the problems that occur.